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"We're not a democracy."
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"Democracy can exist only in the countries where people are brave! Coward nations always live under the authoritarian regimes!"
"I'm much more attracted personally to governments going their full term. It's very hard to have a fixed term election I know with ah... a parliamentary democracy, but I've always had an instinct to say there should be a fixed term."
"Those who abhors democracy would rarely immigrate to an authoritarian state if they have to."
"Change represents the real spirit of democracy and the real America."
"Democrats and Republicans alike support our military personnel."
"Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them to despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely precarious; the consequence is that they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated without remorse."
"Self-government is in inverse ratio to numbers. The larger the constituency, the less the value of any particular vote. When he is merely one of millions, the individual elector feels himself to be impotent, a negligible quantity. The candidates he has voted into office are far away, at the top of the pyramid of power. Theoretically they are the servants of the people; but in fact it is the servants who give orders and the people, far off at the base of the great pyramid, who must obey."
Explore more quotes by Gore Vidal
"Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made."
"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half."
"As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests."
"The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return."
"Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent."
"Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil."
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